Comparative Advantage in Disaster Response

This paper introduces a framework for a systematic analysis of the comparative advantages of various types of emergency responders. Our hypothesis is that one can define and then test comparative advantages across categories of actors and that a policy-making framework can help prepare better disaster responses in the future. We present an analytic framework that categorizes NGOs, governments, militaries and private responders at various levels. This initial theoretical framework provides a structure to begin to analyze comparative advantage. It suggests that there might be better combinations and sequences of responders in given situations. With the basic theory set forth, the framework is tested against data from two cases: 1) the disaster response following the 2004 Tsunami in Sri Lanka and 2) the response in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Ultimately, this work is intended to inspire other researchers interested in questions of disaster response to employ this methodology to develop and publish cases as well, creating a body of analysis that could then be further refined into policy recommendations to improve humanitarian emergency efforts.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 38. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

rpavirtual: Key lessons in healthcare organisational resilience in the time of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unfolding crisis which is continually testing the resilience of healthcare organisations. In this context, a key requirement for executives, managers and frontline staff is continually adapting, learning and coping with complexity under pressure to deliver high quality and safe care. Sydney Local Health District has responded to the COVID-19 crisis, in part, through the pivoting of rpavirtual, a newly established virtual health service, to deliver an innovative model of care in a clinically rigorous and safe manner. Through reviewing the rapid evolution of rpavirtual's purpose, implementation challenges and impact, we investigate how it has displayed resilience and derive key lessons for health organisations

Early warning of critical transitions in biodiversity from compositional disorder

Global environmental change presents a clear need for improved leading indicators of critical transitions, especially those that can be generated from compositional data and that work in empirical cases. Ecological theory of community dynamics under environmental forcing predicts an early replacement of slowly replicating and weakly competitive “canary” species by slowly replicating but strongly competitive “keystone” species. Further forcing leads to the eventual collapse of the keystone species as they are replaced by weakly competitive but fast‐replicating “weedy” species in a critical transition to a significantly different state. We identify a diagnostic signal of these changes in the coefficients of a correlation between compositional disorder and biodiversity. Compositional disorder measures unpredictability in the composition of a community, while biodiversity measures the amount of species in the community. In a stochastic simulation, sequential correlations over time switch from positive to negative as keystones prevail over canaries, and back to positive with domination of weedy species. The model finds support in empirical tests on multi‐decadal time series of fossil diatom and chironomid communities from lakes in China. The characteristic switch from positive to negative correlation coefficients occurs for both communities up to three decades preceding a critical transition to a sustained alternate state. This signal is robust to unequal time increments that beset the identification of early‐warning signals from other metrics

No good surprises: intending lecturers' preconceptions and initial experiences of further education

Current initiatives to promote lifelong learning and a broader inclusiveness in post-16 education have focused attention on further education (FE). The article examines the experiences and reactions of 41 intending lecturers studying full-time for a Postgraduate Certificate in Further Education and Training (PGCET), as they enter FE colleges on teaching practice and encounter FE students for the first time. It argues that the sector may have something to learn from the contrast between these intending lecturers' expectations and their subsequent experiences, and that attempts to address problems which are endemic within the current FE sector by initiatives to improve teacher competence, such as the Further Education National Training Organisation (FENTO)'s recently introduced FE teacher training standards, are inadequate and misdirected